When June Saved My Life

(Or, in other words, when my parents saved my life by getting her.)

I’ve thought about not writing this story out a few times. Talking about my years stuck in depression isn’t really something I enjoy, and I usually find it to be not only a bummer but directly antithetical to the source of optimism and joy that I try to be on the daily. But, the more I think about it, the more I realize that not only is it a story that could be seen as a message of hope, but something that I just want properly written down for my own sake.

I am going to warn you now, because I don’t enjoy talking about this, but I think it needs to be said anyway: I was suicidal, and I am going to talk about that. It’s raw and painful, but I also want you to read the whole thing! I want to show you the change that is possible in someone’s life, mine included. You’ll like where this ends up. I promise.

The Before

I had been depressed for a good long while. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when things like that start, but I can confidently say that my emotions went pretty fully offline sometime after I turned 13 or so, and it took me fighting tooth and nail to get me to a spot where I felt fully myself again around 16 years old. So that’s a solid three years of the most intense depression I’d ever known.

By the time this story rolled around, I was deeper in the depths than I had ever been. I didn’t have the energy to wash my hair, let alone lift my head half the time. We had recently come out of fighting a bedbug infestation that had literally ONLY affected my room, which meant that I had spent several weeks sleeping on the couch because my bed had been thrown away, and beds take a long time to replace. I just stopped sleeping entirely, actually: a combination of my newly-awakened phobia of bedbugs made it so that I couldn’t stop rocking back and forth on my side, lying on the couch in my basement, staring at my alarm clock and blearily watching the hours tick by.

My lowest point was after four days straight of no sleep. I am not kidding—I remember clearly because for every day I stayed awake, there was a night spent staring at the ceiling, with the only hope of going to sleep dangled in front of me as the fantasy of walking into traffic and being hit. I know. That’s not a fantasy. That’s called suicidal thoughts, and I was so far gone that I didn’t care.

Four days of no sleep, five months without a period, and several emails home about missing assignments and being pulled aside by teachers giving me the you know you can come to me if something’s wrong talk, I finally mustered up the desperation to ask my mother to take me to the doctor. One slate-grey day in February, she did.

After getting blood drawn in both arms, I vaguely remember getting a prescription for some very strong sleeping medication and some un-frosted animal crackers for my trouble. I know that words were exchanged between the doctor and my wonderful concerned mother, but all I remember is that they sounded like the parents from charlie brown and I was so, so tired.

The most important thing I remember is that, sitting there in the doctor’s office, feeling my slushy heartbeat press up against the scratchy gauze that wrapped too tightly around both of my arms, listening to the vague worry of everyone around me, I decided that I would make it until summertime. I thought I at least owed everyone that.

I don’t remember the rest of the school year.

The Puppies

Somehow, summer rolled around.

At this point I had finally gotten a bed again: my barebones room (still massacred from the bedbugs, but slowly returning to life) had a brand-new bed frame that I was putting together and some tentative May light streaming through the window.

I was supposed to be helping unpack the mattress that had arrived. But I got a call from Addy (my best friend who grew up across the street from me), who said that our neighbor’s dog had puppies. Goldendoodles, she said. She wanted to know if I wanted to go see them.

I did.

I had long since given up on my childhood dream of having a dog, because my mom had grown up terrified of them and our backyard didn’t have a fence, which made it a little difficult to keep a dog in it.

But, despite trembling and slow-churning fog that was my brain, I knew I still loved animals. So of course, I said yes and went with her.

The puppies were in the garage, yipping and whining to be let out of their enclosure into the backyard. They were all different shades of blonde or brown, ranging from the rusty-red of the puppy that Addy’s family had already laid claim on to a lovely golden graham-cracker color of a small puppy that hung around the back of the pile and didn’t make a lot of sounds, other than crying.

We spent the afternoon playing with the rough-and-tumble bunch of puppies, stubby legs that couldn’t get them very far without flipping or rolling, button noses constantly shoved into the dirt.

When I came back that evening, I had a camera roll full of photos and a small spark of life in my eyes that I’m sure my parents saw, because when I jokingly brought up the idea of getting one, they didn’t immediately shut it down.

I went back several times the next few weeks to see the puppies, watching them get old enough to go to their families. Addy brought home her puppy: Stella, a fireball of energy more than deserving of her name. Pretty soon all but the last two runts of the litter had been purchased: the smallest boy and the smallest girl.

I’d grown very attached to the smallest girl already: she was quiet, fearful, and spent most of her playtime with her siblings getting flipped onto her back and dutifully taking the domination in stride with these great, sad eyes that I couldn’t help but feel on a much deeper level than I meant to.

I never imagined I was going to get a dog. So you can imagine my surprise, and the sudden flash of joy that managed to flare up inside of me like a geyser in a long-dead national park was an overwhelming feeling.

The source of this surprise? My parents had announced that we were getting a dog.

The Night Everything Changed

We named her June. Naturally we had to get the little girl: she was so sweet and calm, barely a biter (compared to her siblings), and had a gorgeous white-blonde coat with only the barest of curls on her little head.

She was also, understandably, a crier. She yelped and howled mournfully more than she ever barked, and whimpered whenever she got scared. (Which was always.)

So for the first night of having her home and sleeping on her own, we had decided that we would take turns sleeping with her in the kitchen, where we had placed her brand-new crate.

I remember lying there on the cold kitchen tile, a throw pillow from the living room under my head, shoulders pinched at the edge of her crate, staring out into my backyard. If it weren’t for the occasional cries of June ringing out in the kitchen and my tentative attempts at consoling her, it would have been painfully similar to the nights I spent on the couch: practically a reflection.

It was almost 5 in the morning when she did it. Saved my life, I mean.

She tumbled out of the small ledge of her crate, which made me curious. She hadn’t tried to leave her crate all night. Did she need to pee? Was she looking for her siblings? Her mother?

Instead, she nudged me with her nose, crawled under my shirt, and fell asleep.

And the universe lit up.

I was sitting there with the fluttering heartbeat of a scared and lonely animal pressed right up against mine, her fur tickling my ribs and her little puppy breaths moistening my collarbone. Her razor-sharp nails were practically tearing holes in my skin, but if they had, I am certain that in that moment the only thing that would have bled out would have been stardust.

I remember staring out into my backyard, watching the first pink rays start to feel their way over the horizon, and I could feel their exact shape start to bloom in my head.

I remember crying.

I remember thinking Okay, you win, and I remember thinking I can’t go anywhere ever again. Mostly, I remember that I was sitting there on the kitchen tile, a cramp in my arms from my sitting position and the savior of my actual life in my shirt, and making the conscious decision that I was NOT going to commit suicide.

It almost sounds stupid in hindsight: what about your family? What about your future? Did it really come down to getting a dog?

But all I can say is, I think June was a vessel for something far greater in that moment. She was a gift from my parents, a messenger from heaven, some magical part of my prehistoric DNA unlocking the joy of companionship, I don’t know. But whatever it was, there was something in that very moment that I can only describe as the last shred of my hope locking into place and rooting firmly to the spot where June was sitting on my chest.

And so life goes on

So it does. I had a long path of recovery ahead of my still: learning to be happy again isn’t something that happens overnight, even if you do have a pivotal moment of purity like I managed to experience.

But the choice had been made, and when you choose to stick around like that, you can only really go up.

I remember years later in my sophomore year of high school, watching an admittedly terrible production of Singin’ In The Rain all by myself and crying, but this time crying because I realized that I really was happy again.

And you know who was there for the whole process?

June, who stayed just as quiet and just as cuddly, though she certainly can’t fit under my shirt anymore.

She looks at me sometimes with those big brown eyes that I fell in love with, and I think, you have no idea, do you?

But then she licks my hand and leans further into my scratches, or tries to hold my arm in her clumsy paws, whose nails are thankfully nowhere near as sharp as they once were. And I think that if she did manage to scratch me open again, I still might bleed stardust.

Because that was five years ago. And I am still happy.

The End (and a thank-you to my parents.)

My parents got June to save me. I know that, because when I told my dad an abridged version of this story while driving home from school one day, he turned to me with tears in his eyes and said, “You know that’s why we got her, right?”

My mom had no experience. She was terrified of dogs. But she got one for me anyway, and threw herself into puppy care and training and understanding them, for me. (And, I am pleased to announce, she’s certainly not afraid of dogs anymore.)

So obviously all I can say is thank you. I’m not sure I’ve ever spoken the magnitude of what that meant to me fully until now, and I hope I can even do it justice by trying.

Thanks for saving my life, even if it meant having to put up with June’s turbo farts and weird habits. You’ll never know just how much it means to me.

And, to June: good girl.